P32 or W20 workhorse

[keyman44]

We are ready to buy a class A gas motor home. Looking at years 2003 - 2005, 30' - 33' in length. I see that we could end up with an independent suspension P32 or a straight axel W20 chassis. I recently drove my buddy's 30' 2003 P32 and it drove pretty good. I drove it on a 4 lane highway with one hand. It didn't seem to be affected much by the wind or big trucks. I didn't have to make a lot of steering corrections to keep it in the lane. I can't find any W20 RV's around here to test drive. How will the W20 drive in comparison? I'm wondering if I will need to add on a bunch of aftermarket stuff to the W20 just to get it to drive decent. I know that the W20 will have a higher GVWR. I would like to hear from people who have experience driving both.

[Eric_and_Karen]

We have a W20 on an Adventurer 33V and like it a lot. The only aftermarket mod I've made was to replace the worn out shocks with new Koni shocks. The coach rides and handles very well. I have no experience with the older P series chassis, so sorry, I cant give you a side by side comparison

[Gale_Hawkins]

tropical36 wrote:

rgatijnet1 wrote:
The facts are that there are thousands of the P chassis vehicles out there, in use for years, in various configurations, including motor homes. Most people drove those P chassis vehicles for business and pleasure with no problems at all. Anyone that has been on this forum knows that some people have trouble driving, period. They will not go over certain bridges and will not travel certain roads, because they just do not know how to drive a motor home, or any other large vehicle. They will be uncomfortable in any vehicle larger than a mini-van. It is not the chassis' fault. The P chassis was, and still is, a chassis that can be driven well, by those that understand how to drive a large vehicle, and also understand that it will never drive like a sports car.

I for one, am having trouble understanding all the negative comments about the P30 chassis. I can pretty much handle it with one finger and for it to ride and handle any better, it would have to be a decent DP. I even have the older narrow track. Can't say I prefer it, since I haven't had the wide, but it does allow me get in under the wheel wells when required and there's a lot more of them out there for parts and such.

Our 1992 P30 wheel spacing is perfect for our use and it handles like a dream. We will on a narrow road and if we were a foot wider it would be hard to keep the back wheel from dropping off the end of the short drive way sewer. If narrow lead to handling issues then I might not be a happy camper. 🙂

There must be a zillion miles put on the P30 and other forward control Chevy trucks over the years. I see some local vending companies running some I am sure are 30+ years old. They hold up well and are cheap to rebuild the under side. On here we hear about slamming but it seems to be about personal preferences and not failures leaving people on the side of the road due to chassis component failures.

As times change the P30 MH's may stay in demand due to their functional long lives under houses. 🙂

I will agree some builders botched air flow designs and over loaded the specs of the chassis design. If you bought a 32' MH on a P30 chassis with 190" wheel base and load the tail heavy the bad handling is not due to the chassis builder.

[wolfe10]

We seem to have an "apples to oranges and now pears" comparison.

Shorter P chassis coaches.

Longer (and likely overloaded P chassis coaches.

P chassis coaches with tag axles.

One SHOULD expect different results with these very different renditions on the P chassis.

[tropical36]

rgatijnet1 wrote:
The facts are that there are thousands of the P chassis vehicles out there, in use for years, in various configurations, including motor homes. Most people drove those P chassis vehicles for business and pleasure with no problems at all. Anyone that has been on this forum knows that some people have trouble driving, period. They will not go over certain bridges and will not travel certain roads, because they just do not know how to drive a motor home, or any other large vehicle. They will be uncomfortable in any vehicle larger than a mini-van. It is not the chassis' fault. The P chassis was, and still is, a chassis that can be driven well, by those that understand how to drive a large vehicle, and also understand that it will never drive like a sports car.

I for one, am having trouble understanding all the negative comments about the P30 chassis. I can pretty much handle it with one finger and for it to ride and handle any better, it would have to be a decent DP. I even have the older narrow track. Can't say I prefer it, since I haven't had the wide, but it does allow me get in under the wheel wells when required and there's a lot more of them out there for parts and such.

[Bumpyroad]

rgatijnet1 wrote:
The facts are that there are thousands of the P chassis vehicles out there, in use for years, in various configurations, including motor homes. Most people drove those P chassis vehicles for business and pleasure with no problems at all. Anyone that has been on this forum knows that some people have trouble driving, period. They will not go over certain bridges and will not travel certain roads, because they just do not know how to drive a motor home, or any other large vehicle. They will be uncomfortable in any vehicle larger than a mini-van. It is not the chassis' fault. The P chassis was, and still is, a chassis that can be driven well, by those that understand how to drive a large vehicle, and also understand that it will never drive like a sports car.

I will say that my P=30 chassis with the narrow front tire spacing and the wheels a foot in from the side was a nightmare when I would get to a situation of a bridge where they had put down a triangle of blacktop to have the lane shift over to the side of the bridge during construction. the blacktop would usually get pushed down and when that wheel caught in that "rut" you had a white knuckle ride for a bit. now I will admit that I obviously don't know how to drive a motorhome and am not as good a driver as you.
bumpy

[rgatijnet1]

The facts are that there are thousands of the P chassis vehicles out there, in use for years, in various configurations, including motor homes. Most people drove those P chassis vehicles for business and pleasure with no problems at all. Anyone that has been on this forum knows that some people have trouble driving, period. They will not go over certain bridges and will not travel certain roads, because they just do not know how to drive a motor home, or any other large vehicle. They will be uncomfortable in any vehicle larger than a mini-van. It is not the chassis' fault. The P chassis was, and still is, a chassis that can be driven well, by those that understand how to drive a large vehicle, and also understand that it will never drive like a sports car.

[Bumpyroad]

Daveinet wrote:
The fact is there is absolutely nothing wrong with a potato chip chassis as long as one does not exceed the original design weight/length. My parents second motorhome was a 27 foot Midas on a P30 chassis. That chassis road better and handled better than their current 34 foot Allegro on a W22 chassis. So much so, at the time I was first learning to drive, I had only ever driven a car all of about 4 miles in my entire life. I hopped into the driver's seat of their motorhome and drove several 100 miles, including 10 miles of construction, narrowed lanes, and a severe crosswind. The narrowed lanes over the bridges was hair raising, but other than that, it was fine. That motorhome handled very well. I think Bumpy is missing the point. The P30 chassis was a very good design. The problem was that it was often loaded well beyond its design limits, so it is no surprise people would have complaints. You really can't fault the chassis.

I pretty much agree with you. however, with the front wheels about 4 1/2 ft apart and set way in from the edge of the vehicle, my two gave a bit of a scare at times. Hair raising at times. I don't think that it can be referred to as a "very good design" however. that chassis also had inadequate air flow past the exhaust headers which self destructed at times. they put some air dams in to try to direct the air flow past them and at one time camping world sold add on baffles for this reason.
while the chassis might have been great for a bread truck, when modified and converted into a RV chassis, lengthening the frame, adding a second rear axle, the inadequate front end, leaky air bags, narrow tread width, overheating exhaust manifolds, etc. it was less than ideal.
But if one is buying a motorhome on a 2000 or so chassis, just because it may be labeled as a Workhorse, does not guarantee that it is the upgraded version.
bumpy

[Daveinet]

The fact is there is absolutely nothing wrong with a potato chip chassis as long as one does not exceed the original design weight/length. My parents second motorhome was a 27 foot Midas on a P30 chassis. That chassis road better and handled better than their current 34 foot Allegro on a W22 chassis. So much so, at the time I was first learning to drive, I had only ever driven a car all of about 4 miles in my entire life. I hopped into the driver's seat of their motorhome and drove several 100 miles, including 10 miles of construction, narrowed lanes, and a severe crosswind. The narrowed lanes over the bridges was hair raising, but other than that, it was fine. That motorhome handled very well. I think Bumpy is missing the point. The P30 chassis was a very good design. The problem was that it was often loaded well beyond its design limits, so it is no surprise people would have complaints. You really can't fault the chassis.

[Bumpyroad]

Gale Hawkins wrote:
Bumpy you know that your last post is false. It was a decent chassis when we bought it in 2007 and drove it home.

We have driven and enjoyed the ride and handling our P30 based MH about 20K miles. We have driven it 1000 miles after removing the worn out air bags and coil springs.

I am talking about the old original P-30/32 bread truck chassis. yes after Ford came out in 1999 with a decent gasser and a few years later workhorse finally made theirs decent.
nothing false about that My only warning for folks would be that workhorse slapped their name on the old P-30/32 so folks getting those originally were buying a sub standard chassis.


bumpy

[C350amg]

Gale Hawkins wrote:
Some of us would not have ever had a MH experience had it not been for the P30 454 MH chassis and EPDM rubber roofs. Please do not post your opinion as a fact of life and confuse good people hoping to offer their family a MH experience the best way they can.

So right 🙂

That old RV which I bought in April got us on an unbelievable trip accross the US from coast to coast. It met my requirements which was to be not to expensive since I will not keep it. That trip was in my bucket list, but the next trips will not be in an RV (kind of difficult to fly it to Africa or Asia :E)

[Gale_Hawkins]

tropical36 wrote:

keyman44 wrote:
We are ready to buy a class A gas motor home. Looking at years 2003 - 2005, 30' - 33' in length. I see that we could end up with an independent suspension P32 or a straight axel W20 chassis. I recently drove my buddy's 30' 2003 P32 and it drove pretty good. I drove it on a 4 lane highway with one hand. It didn't seem to be affected much by the wind or big trucks. I didn't have to make a lot of steering corrections to keep it in the lane. I can't find any W20 RV's around here to test drive. How will the W20 drive in comparison? I'm wondering if I will need to add on a bunch of aftermarket stuff to the W20 just to get it to drive decent. I know that the W20 will have a higher GVWR. I would like to hear from people who have experience driving both.

My P32 is an excellent driver and much improved with the addition of after market coils and the elimination of the air bags and helwig cross leaf spring as well. Still, I would prefer the W chassis for all the reasons already listed and especially the W24. Any Allison transmission over the GM is a big plus in itself.
You might want to add some sway bars and a steering damper and you'll know more after driving the W for awhile.

While we do not have a Workhorse chassis I agree that should be a preferred chassis because it is newer and designed by a maker of buses.

When an RV builder went over 30-32' on the P30 chassis they had pushed to the max design size planned by GM and had to add tag axles. I expect the folks with 22-28' MH's build to the P30 had a difference experience. Our 1992 chassis came with the 19.5 wheels which was an improvement over MH chassis built for 16" wheels.

Newer than 10 years old is a plus when buying. In our case we had a budget of $8000 to buy a MH. The rubber roofed 32' 1993 GBM Pursuit fit the bill and has handled well from day of purchase. To be fair to Bumpy I started driving worn out farm trucks in the 60's so the 1992 P30 truck under our first and only MH was the best quality/handling truck I had ever driven. :B

[Gale_Hawkins]

Bumpy you know that your last post is false. It was a decent chassis when we bought it in 2007 and drove it home.

We have driven and enjoyed the ride and handling our P30 based MH about 20K miles. We have driven it 1000 miles after removing the worn out air bags and coil springs.

[tropical36]

keyman44 wrote:
We are ready to buy a class A gas motor home. Looking at years 2003 - 2005, 30' - 33' in length. I see that we could end up with an independent suspension P32 or a straight axel W20 chassis. I recently drove my buddy's 30' 2003 P32 and it drove pretty good. I drove it on a 4 lane highway with one hand. It didn't seem to be affected much by the wind or big trucks. I didn't have to make a lot of steering corrections to keep it in the lane. I can't find any W20 RV's around here to test drive. How will the W20 drive in comparison? I'm wondering if I will need to add on a bunch of aftermarket stuff to the W20 just to get it to drive decent. I know that the W20 will have a higher GVWR. I would like to hear from people who have experience driving both.

My P32 is an excellent driver and much improved with the addition of after market coils and the elimination of the air bags and helwig cross leaf spring as well. Still, I would prefer the W chassis for all the reasons already listed and especially the W24. Any Allison transmission over the GM is a big plus in itself.
You might want to add some sway bars and a steering damper and you'll know more after driving the W for awhile.

[Bumpyroad]

Gale Hawkins wrote:
Bumpy how bumpy is your bumpy road?

The Chevy P series chassis does not have to be rebuild to be decent anymore that you have to rebuild a rubber roof MH with with fiberglass roofing materials for them to stay dry.

At year 18 our 1992 P30 MH chassis front coil springs sagged so the ride height was too low even with 100 PSI in the leaking air bags. For the same price as new OEM coils and new air bags installed we did loose the air bags for good and upgraded the chassis by going to the

as I said, you rebuilt your P-30 chassis and made a decent one out of it.
bumpy